School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Measuring the Speaking Proficiency of Advanced EFL Learners in China: The CET-SET Solution
    Zhang, Y ; Elder, C (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2009)
  • Item
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Lange, citoyenneté et identité au Québec
    Oakes, L ; WARREN, J (Les Presses de l'Universite Laval, 2009)
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Pair versus individual writing: Effects on fluency, complexity and accuracy
    Wigglesworth, G ; Storch, N (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2009-07)
    The assessment of oral language is now quite commonly done in pairs or groups, and there is a growing body of research which investigates the related issues (e.g. May, 2007). Writing generally tends to be thought of as an individual activity, although a small number of studies have documented the advantages of collaboration in writing in the second language classroom (e.g. DiCamilla & Anton, 1997; Storch, 2005; Swain & Lapkin, 1998). Particularly in university contexts, group or pair assignments are widely used in many disciplines. In addition, collaborative writing could be used in second language classroom assessment contexts as formative assessment. However, research which compares texts produced by learners collaboratively to texts produced individually, and the implications of this for assessment practices, is rare. This study is a first step in the investigation of using collaborative writing in second language contexts and comparing the performance of two groups of second language learners: one group worked individually, and the other group worked in pairs. When writing in pairs, each pair produced a single text. All participants completed one writing task: an argumentative essay. The performances of the individuals (N = 48) and the pairs (N = 48) were compared on detailed discourse analytic measures of fluency, complexity and accuracy. This comparison revealed that collaboration impacted positively on accuracy, but did not affect fluency and complexity. A detailed analysis of the pair transcripts recorded during the writing activity provides insights into the ways in which pairs work together, and the foci of their endeavour. The implications of these findings for in-class assessment of second language writing are discussed.
  • Item
  • Item
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    An entertaining tale of quadrupeds - translation and commentary
    NICHOLAS, N ; BALOGLOU, G (Columbia University Press, 2003)
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Typologies of agreement: Some problems from Kayardild
    Evans, N (BLACKWELL PUBL LTD, 2003)
    ‘that rarity, nouns…, those most reluctant agreers, aggreeing in case, of all categories’ (Plank 1995: 32) In this paper I describe a number of agreement‐type phenomena in the Australian language Kayardild, and assess them against existing definitions, stating both the boundaries of what is to be considered agreement, and characteristics of prototypical agreement phenomena. Though conforming, prima facie, to definitions of agreement that stress semantically based covariance in inflections on different words, the Kayardild phenomena considered here pose a number of challenges to accepted views of agreement: the rich possibilities for stacking case‐like agreement inflections emanating from different syntactic levels, the fact that inflections resulting from agreement may change the word class of their host, and the semantic categories involved, in particular tense/aspect/mood, which have been claimed not to be agreement categories on nominals. Two types of inflection, in particular—‘modal case’ and ‘associating case’—lie somewhere between prototypical agreement and prototypical government. Like agreement, but unlike government, they are triggered by inflectional rather than lexical features of the head, and appear on more than one constituent; like government, but unlike agreement, the semantic categories on head and dependent are not isomorphic. Other types of inflection, though unusual in the categories involved, the possibility of recursion, and their effects on the host's word class, are close to prototypical in terms of how they fare in Corbett's proposed tests for canonical agreement.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Empowerment through the community language- A challenge
    CLYNE, M (Walter de Gruyter, 2006)